University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.

An interval of silence was at last broken by Babbalanja.

Pointing to the sun, just gaining the horizon, he exclaimed,
“As old Bardianna says—shut your eyes, and believe.”

“And what may Bardianna have to do with yonder
orb?” said Media.

“This much, my lord, the astronomers maintain that
Mardi moves round the sun; which I, who never formally
investigated the matter for myself, can by no means credit;
unless, plainly seeing one thing, I blindly believe another.
Yet even thus blindly does all Mardi subscribe to an astronomical
system, which not one in fifty thousand can astronomically
prove. And not many centuries back, my lord,
all Mardi did equally subscribe to an astronomical system,
precisely the reverse of that which they now believe. But
the mass of Mardians have not as much reason to believe
the first system, as the exploded one; for all who have eyes
must assuredly see, that the sun seems to move, and that
Mardi seems a fixture, eternally here. But doubtless there
are theories which may be true, though the face of things
belie them. Hence, in such cases, to the ignorant, disbelief
would seem more natural than faith; though they too often
reject the testimony of their own senses, for what to them,
is a mere hypothesis. And thus, my lord, is it, that the
mass of Mardians do not believe because they know, but
because they know not. And they are as ready to receive
one thing as another, if it comes from a canonical source.
My lord, Mardi is as an ostrich, which will swallow aught

you offer, even a bar of iron, if placed endwise. And though
the iron be indigestible, yet it serves to fill: in feeding, the
end proposed. For Mardi must have something to exercise
its digestion, though that something be forever indigestible.
And as fishermen for sport, throw two lumps of bait, united
by a cord, to albatrosses floating on the sea; which are
greedily attempted to be swallowed, one lump by this fowl,
the other by that; but forever are kept reciprocally going
up and down in them, by means of the cord; even so, my
lord, do I sometimes fancy, that our theorists divert themselves
with the greediness of Mardians to believe.”

“Ha, ha,” cried Media, “methinks this must be Azzageddi
who speaks.”

“No, my lord; not long since, Azzageddi received a
furlough to go home and warm himself for a while. But
this leaves me not alone.”

“How?”

“My lord,—for the present putting Azzageddi entirely
aside,—though I have now been upon terms of close companionship
with myself for nigh five hundred moons, I have
not yet been able to decide who or what I am. To you, perhaps,
I seem Babbalanja; but to myself, I seem not myself.
All I am sure of, is a sort of prickly sensation all over me,
which they call life; and, occasionally, a headache or a
queer conceit admonishes me, that there is something astir
in my attic. But how know I, that these sensations are
identical with myself? For aught I know, I may be
somebody else. At any rate, I keep an eye on myself, as
I would on a stranger. There is something going on in
me, that is independent of me. Many a time, have I willed
to do one thing, and another has been done. I will not say
by myself, for I was not consulted about it; it was done
instinctively. My most virtuous thoughts are not born of
my musings, but spring up in me, like bright fancies to the
poet; unsought, spontaneous. Whence they come I know
not. I am a blind man pushed from behind; in vain, I

turn about to see what propels me. As vanity, I regard
the praises of my friends; for what they commend pertains
not to me, Babbalanja; but to this unknown something that
forces me to it. But why am I, a middle aged Mardian,
less prone to excesses than when a youth? The same
inducements and allurements are around me. But no; my
more ardent passions are burned out; those which are
strongest when we are least able to resist them. Thus,
then, my lord, it is not so much outer temptations that prevail
over us mortals; but inward instincts.”

“A very curious speculation,” said Media.—“But Babbalanja,
have you mortals no moral sense, as they call it?”

“We have. But the thing you speak of is but an afterbirth;
we eat and drink many months before we are conscious
of thoughts. And though some adults would seem to
refer all their actions to this moral sense, yet, in reality, it
is not so; for, dominant in them, their moral sense bridles
their instinctive passions; wherefore, they do not govern
themselves, but are governed by their very natures. Thus,
some men in youth are constitutionally as staid as I am
now. But shall we pronounce them pious and worthy
youths for this? Does he abstain, who is not incited?
And on the other hand, if the instinctive passions through
life naturally have the supremacy over the moral sense, as
in extreme cases we see it developed in irreclaimable malefactors,—shall
we pronounce such, criminal and detestable
wretches? My lord, it is easier for some men to be saints,
than for others not to be sinners.”

“That will do, Babbalanja; you are on the verge, take
not the leap! Go back whence you set out, and tell us of
that other, and still more mysterious Azzageddi; him whom
you hinted to have palmed himself off on you for you yourself.”

“Well, then, my lord,—Azzageddi still set aside,—upon
that self-same inscrutable stranger, I charge all those past
actions of mine, which in the retrospect appear to me such
eminent folly, that I am confident, it was not I, Babbalanja,

now speaking, that committed them. Nevertheless, my
lord, this very day I may do some act, which at a future
period may seem equally senseless; for in one life-time we live
a hundred lives. By the incomprehensible stranger in me,
I say, this body of mine has been rented out scores of times,
though always one dark chamber in me is retained by the
old mystery.”

“Will you never come to the mark, Babbalanja? Tell
me something direct of the stranger. Who, what is he?
Introduce him.”

“My lord, I can not. He is locked up in me. In a
mask, he dodges me. He prowls about in me, hither and
thither; he peers, and I stare. This is he who talks in my
sleep, revealing my secrets; and takes me to unheard of
realms, beyond the skies of Mardi. So present is he always,
that I seem not so much to live of myself, as to be a mere
apprehension of the unaccountable being that is in me. Yet
all the time, this being is I, myself.”

“Babbalanja,” said Media, “you have fairly turned
yourself inside out.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Mohi, “and he has so unsettled me,
that I begin to think all Mardi a square circle.”

“How is that, Babbalanja,” said Media, “is a circle
square?”

“No, my lord, but ever since Mardi began, we Mardians
have been essaying our best to square it.”

“Cleverly retorted. Now, Babbalanja, do you not imagine,
that you may do harm by disseminating these sophisms
of yours; which like your devil theory, would seem to
relieve all Mardi from moral accountability?”

“My lord, at bottom, men wear no bonds that other men
can strike off; and have no immunities, of which other men
can deprive them. Tell a good man that he is free to commit
murder,—will he murder? Tell a murderer that at
the peril of his soul he indulges in murderous thoughts,—
will that make him a saint?”

“Again on the verge, Babbalanja? Take not the leap,
I say.”

“I can leap no more, my lord. Already I am down,
down, down.”

“Philosopher,” said Media, “what with Azzageddi, and
the mysterious indweller you darkly hint of, I marvel not
that you are puzzled to decide upon your identity. But
when do you seem most yourself?”

“When I sleep, and dream not, my lord.”

“Indeed?”

“Why then, a fool's cap might be put on you, and you
would not know it.”

“The very turban he ought to wear,” muttered Mohi.

“Yet, my lord, I live while consciousness is not mine,
while to all appearances I am a clod. And may not this
same state of being, though but alternate with me, be continually
that of many dumb, passive objects we so carelessly
regard? Trust me, there are more things alive than those
that crawl, or fly, or swim. Think you, my lord, there is
no sensation in being a tree? feeling the sap in one's boughs,
the breeze in one's foliage? think you it is nothing to be a
world? one of a herd, bison-like, wending its way across
boundless meadows of ether? In the sight of a fowl, that
sees not our souls, what are our own tokens of animation?
That we move, make a noise, have organs, pulses, and are
compounded of fluids and solids. And all these are in this
Mardi as a unit. Daily the slow, majestic throbbings of its
heart are perceptible on the surface in the tides of the lagoon.
Its rivers are its veins; when agonized, earthquakes
are its throes; it shouts in the thunder, and weeps in the
shower; and as the body of a bison is covered with hair, so
Mardi is covered with grasses and vegetation, among which,
we parasitical things do but crawl, vexing and tormenting
the patient creature to which we cling. Nor yet, hath it
recovered from the pain of the first foundation that was laid.
Mardi is alive to its axis. When you pour water, does it

not gurgle? When you strike a pearl shell, does it not
ring? Think you there is no sensation in being a rock?—
To exist, is to be; to be, is to be something: to be something,
is—”

“Go on,” said Media.

“And what is it, to be something?” said Yoomy artlessly.

“Bethink yourself of what went before,” said Media.

“Lose not the thread,” said Mohi.

“It has snapped,” said Babbalanja.

“I breathe again,” said Mohi.

“But what a stepping-off place you came to then, philosopher,”
said Media. “By the way, is it not old Bardianna
who says, that no Mardian should undertake to walk, without
keeping one foot foremost?”

“To return to the vagueness of the notion I have of
myself,” said Babbalanja.

“An appropriate theme,” said Media, “proceed.”

“My lord,” murmured Mohi, “Is not this philosopher
like a centipede? Cut off his head, and still he crawls.”

“There are times when I fancy myself a lunatic,” resumed
Babbalanja.

“Ah, now he's beginning to talk sense,” whispered Mohi.

“Surely you forget, Babbalanja,” said Media. “Howmany
more theories have you? First, you are possessed by a
devil; then rent yourself out to the indweller; and now
turn yourself into a mad-house. You are inconsistent.”

“And for that very reason, my lord, not inconsistent; for
the sum of my inconsistencies makes up my consistency.
And to be consistent to one's self, is often to be inconsistent
to Mardi. Common consistency implies unchangeableness;
but much of the wisdom here below lives in a state of transition.”

“Ah!” murmured Mohi, “my head goes round again.”

“Azzageddi aside, then, my lord, and also, for the nonce,
the mysterious indweller, I come now to treat of myself as
a lunatic. But this last conceit is not so much based upon

the madness of particular actions, as upon the whole drift
of my ordinary and hourly ones; those, in which I most
resemble all other Mardians. It seems like going through
with some nonsensical whim-whams, destitute of fixed purpose.
For though many of my actions seem to have objects,
and all of them somehow run into each other; yet, where
is the grand result? To what final purpose, do I walk
about, eat, think, dream? To what great end, does Mohi
there, now stroke his beard?”

“But I was doing it unconsciously,” said Mohi, dropping
his hand, and lifting his head.

“Just what I would be at, old man. `What we do,
we do blindly,' says old Bardianna. Many things we do,
we do without knowing,—as with you and your beard,
Mohi. And many others we know not, in their true bearing
at least, till they are past. Are not half our lives spent
in reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and
consequences of which, we were wholly ignorant at the
time? Says old Bardianna, `Did I not so often feel an appetite
for my yams, I should think every thing a dream;'—
so puzzling to him, seemed the things of this Mardi. But
Alla-Malolla goes further. Says he, `Let us club together,
fellow-riddles:—Kings, clowns, and intermediates. We
are bundles of comical sensations; we bejuggle ourselves
into strange phantasies: we are air, wind, breath, bubbles;
our being is told in a tick.' ”

“Now, then, Babbalanja,” said Media, “what have you
come to in all this rhapsody? You everlastingly travel in a
circle.”

“And so does the sun in heaven, my lord; like me, it
goes round, and gives light as it goes. Old Bardianna, too,
revolved. He says so himself. In his roundabout chapter
on Cycles and Epicycles, with Notes on the Ecliptic, he
thus discourseth:—`All things revolve upon some center, to
them, fixed; for the centripetal is ever too much for the
centrifugal. Wherefore, it is a perpetual cycling with us,

without progression; and we fly round, whether we will or
no. To stop, were to sink into space. So, over and over
we go, and round and round; double-shuffle, on our axis, and
round the sun.' In an another place, he says:—`There is
neither apogee nor perigee, north nor south, right nor left;
what to-night is our zenith, to-morrow is our nadir; stand
as we will, we stand on our heads; essay to spring into the
air, and down we come; here we stick; our very bones
make glue.' ”

“Enough, enough, Babbalanja,” cried Media. “You
are a very wise Mardian; but the wisest Mardians make
the most consummate fools.”

“So they do, my lord; but I was interrupted. I was
about to say, that there is no place but the universe; no
limit but the limitless; no bottom but the bottomless.”